At the BITter end...

I am not a natural DIY person. My father was a farmer's boy and could fix most things and if he couldn't his older brother could. My step-father was a very nice chap but no good with fixing things so I didn't get the parental instruction I should have.

At school I was okay at woodwork and metalwork but never excellent. I can do things but I'm not naturally good and I don't have the depth of experience to know what to do when things don't work the way the book says they should. I also don't have all the tools, so every time I do something there is always one more tool to buy...

Today I need to put a curtain rail up. Our house is a properly built 1930s house made of real wood and bricks, not a modern house made from cardboard and polystyrene. The only problem with the house is that it's been bodged since it was originally built, so while a given wall should be made from incredibly hard bricks you don't actually know that it's been filled with low density concrete blocks until to drill into it...

The curtail rail required 6 holes with a 6 mm masonry drill bit. There were two holes already in place an of an acceptable size and I even have the correct drill bits and a proper hammer action drill. I drilled a small pilot hole first with a 4 mm bit to get the hole going then finished off with the 6 mm. Above this window the brickwork was as hard a granite and this blip shows all that is left of the small 4 mm drill bit. The 6 mm bit fared a bit better but it is fair to say that the wall won, one hole is really far too shallow for my liking. I've a horrible feeling that the wall actually has an RSJ in it, and it was a piece of steel I hit that did the damage to the bit.